Now that Ken Burns and Lynn Novick’s much-heralded documentary has revived a national discussion of the Vietnam War, this might be a good time to take another look at some of the faulty memories that have displaced much of the true history of that conflict.

One place that could use some fact-checking is the official website of the Pentagon’s Vietnam War Commemoration, marking the war’s fiftieth anniversary. Most of the criticism of that site has come from antiwar groups complaining about what they see as a prowar slant. But leaving the political debate aside, there are outright and indisputable errors of fact in the site’s interactive timeline and its set of fact sheets, both part of the History & Legacy section. Correcting those should be uncontroversial, but many remain unchanged months or even years after they were called to the site administrators’ attention.

The inaccuracies include sins of commission and of omission—mistaken statements of fact, and important facts left unmentioned.

In the former category, some mistakes sound abstruse or insignificant. But separately and cumulatively, they distort history in meaningful ways.

For example, the opening paragraph of the US Army fact sheet (there’s one for each of the military services) says: “The Geneva Accords of July 1954 divided Vietnam into a Communist state in the North and an anti-Communist state in the South.”

That is false. The Geneva treaty recognized Vietnam as a single nation. Defining the line between South and North as a “military demarcation line” temporarily separating the opposing French and Viet Minh armed forces, the agreement explicitly stated that the dividing line “is provisional and should not in any way be interpreted as constituting a political or territorial boundary.”

This may seem a minor technicality, but it’s not. It distorts a fundamental issue: what the war was about. Was it a war of illegal foreign aggression by North Vietnam against the South, as the United States insisted? Or a war to reunify an illegally divided country, as the Communist side proclaimed? There are arguments on both sides of that question, but the Geneva agreement did not support the US legal and political justification for intervening in Vietnam, and falsely saying it did gives the American position an uncontested legitimacy it did not have. (The timeline’s separate entry on the Geneva agreement has it right, by the way.)

Another example is in the Air Force fact sheet, which says this about the year-end US air offensive in 1972 that became known as the “Christmas bombing” (the fact sheet uses the actual codename, Linebacker):

As [peace] talks dragged on, President Nixon ordered a second Linebacker operation and in late December 1972, B-52s struck Hanoi and Haiphong at night and A-7s and F-4s struck during the day. . . . The North Vietnamese, now defenseless, returned to negotiations and quickly concluded a settlement. American airpower therefore played a decisive role in ending the long conflict.

Again, the facts do not support that claim. The December bombing did not lead to any new concessions by Hanoi. The terms North Vietnam agreed to after the bombing were in essence exactly the same ones they had accepted in October 1972, before the bombing. The October text was not an agreement in principle or a draft for negotiation, but a complete, final treaty, accepted by both sides. It did not go into effect only because the United States withdrew its commitment after the South Vietnamese government, which had not been a party to the negotiations, refused to go along. After the Christmas bombing, under heavy US pressure, Saigon agreed to the treaty (so it was South Vietnam, not the North, that changed its position after the Linebacker campaign). None of this is mentioned anywhere on the fiftieth anniversary site.

That’s not an inconsequential mistake, either. It makes an unjustified claim for the role of air power and mischaracterizes a critical event in the final chapters of the war.

Errors of omission are also glaring. In one startling example, the timeline does not mention the March 1970 coup that overthrew Norodom Sihanouk, toppled Cambodia into full-scale war, and precipitated the incursion by US troops six weeks later.

In another notable omission, the timeline leaves out South Vietnam’s only authentic presidential election, in September 1967. President Nguyen Van Thieu won the election with just over one-third of the votes, while a peace candidate, Truong Dinh Dzu, unexpectedly took second place with support from nearly 20 percent of the electorate. (After the election Dzu was swiftly imprisoned—somewhat tarnishing Saigon’s and Washington’s assertions that South Vietnam was a legitimate democracy.)

Also missing is the intensive six-month US bombing in Cambodia in 1973, after the Paris agreement had ended direct US military action in Vietnam. The single reference is in an entrysaying only that Congress withdrew funding and ended “U.S. air action in Cambodia and Laos.” No other words about the Cambodia campaign appear there or anywhere in the timeline. And at the far end of its span, the timeline does not mention Thieu’s resignation and his nighttime flight out of Vietnam in the war’s final days in April 1975.

Historians and other critics have been criticizing the Pentagon site almost since it was unveiled, and site officials have been promising for much of that time to review and revise its content. Army Col. (ret.) Mark Franklin, chief of the commemoration’s History & Legacy Branch, has agreed on a number of occasions over many months that the timeline, in particular, should be replaced by one that would be “more objective, more comprehensive, and with more context.”

Nearly two years after that presentation, though, no new changes have appeared. (Earlier, a small number of entries were revised in late 2014 and early 2015, but as far as can be determined, no revisions have been made since then.) There is still no definite timetable for posting the new site (administrators now say it may go online by the end of this year, but that remains uncertain). It is unclear whether the long delay is chiefly due to technical problems, sluggish bureaucracy, or deliberate foot-dragging elsewhere in the Pentagon. It is also unclear why specific errors could not be corrected without waiting for the entire site to be replaced.

The first objective of the commemoration, as presented on the website, is “to thank and honor veterans of the Vietnam War.” False history does not serve that goal. Some of the facts are uncomfortable, but the men and women who served in Vietnam are not children who need to be shielded from difficult truths. Misrepresenting those truths doesn’t honor those veterans; it disrespects them.

Another purpose of the site, stated on the opening page of the History & Legacy section, is “to provide the American public with historically accurate materials [emphasis added] . . . that will help Americans better understand and appreciate the service of our Vietnam War veterans and the history of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.”

The present site falls short of that pledge. It is long past time to meet it.

Arnold R. Isaacs covered the last three years of the Vietnam war for the Baltimore Sun. He is the author of Without Honor: Defeat in Vietnam and Cambodia and Vietnam Shadows: The War, Its Ghosts, and Its Legacy.

The views expressed are those of the author and not necessarily those of West Point, the Department of the Army, the Department of Defense, or any agency of the US government.

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March 1 – Clark Clifford, an old friend of the President, replaces McNamara as U.S. Secretary of Defense. For the next few days, Clifford conducts an intensive study of the entire situation in Vietnam, discovers there is no concept or overall plan anywhere in Washington for achieving victory in Vietnam, and then reports to President Johnson that the United States should not escalate the war. “The time has come to decide where we go from here,” he tells Johnson.

March 2 48 U.S. Army soldiers are killed during an ambush at Tan Son Nhut (Tân Sơn Nhứt) airbase near Saigon.

March 8 Capt. Dale Noyd is sentenced to one year at hard labor and dismissed from the service for refusing to train pilots for service in Vietnam.

March 10 The New York Times breaks the news of Westmoreland’s 206,000-troop request. The Times story is denied by the White House. Secretary of State Dean Rusk is then called before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and grilled for two days on live TV about the troop request and the overall effectiveness of Johnson’s war strategy.

March 11-April 7 Operation Quyet Thang (Quyết Thắng—Operation Sure Thing) begins a 28-day offensive by 33 U.S. and South Vietnamese battalions in the Saigon region.

March 12 By a slim margin of 300 votes, President Johnson defeats anti-war Democrat Eugene McCarthy in the New Hampshire Democratic primary election, a sign that political support for Johnson is seriously eroding.

Public opinion polls taken after the Tet (Tết) Offensive reveal Johnson’s overall approval rating has slipped to 36 percent, while approval of his Vietnam War policy slipped to 26 percent.

March 14 Senator Robert F. Kennedy offers President Johnson a confidential political proposition. Kennedy will agree to stay out of the presidential race if Johnson will renounce his earlier Vietnam strategy and appoint a committee, including Kennedy, to chart a new course in Vietnam. Johnson spurns the offer.

March 16 Hundreds of villagers in the hamlet of My Lai (Mỹ Lai or Sơn Mỹ) are massacred by members of Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry U.S. Army, while participating in an airborne assault against suspected NLF encampments in Quang Ngai (Quảng Ngãi) Province. Upon entering My Lai and finding no NLF, the Americans begin killing every civilian in sight, interrupted only by helicopter pilot Hugh Thompson.

Thompson and his Hiller OH-23 Raven crew, Glenn Andreotta and Lawrence Colburn, stopped a number of killings by threatening and blocking officers and enlisted soldiers of Company C. Additionally, Thompson and his crew saved a number of Vietnamese civilians by personally escorting them away from advancing United States Army ground units and evacuating them by air. Thompson reported the atrocities by radio several times while at Sơn Mỹ. Despite these reports, nothing was done to stop the massacre. After evacuating a child to a Quảng Ngãi hospital, Thompson angrily reported to his superiors, in person at Task Force Barker headquarters, that a massacre was occurring at Sơn Mỹ. Immediately following Thompson’s report, Lieutenant Colonel Frank A. Barker ordered all ground units in Sơn Mỹ to cease search and destroy operations in the village. In 1970, Thompson testified against those responsible for the My Lai Massacre. Twenty-six officers and enlisted soldiers, including William Calley and Ernest Medina, were charged with criminal offenses, but all were either acquitted or pardoned. Thompson was condemned and ostracized by many individuals in the United States military and government, as well as the public, for his role in the investigations and trials concerning the Mỹ Lai Massacre. As a direct result of what he experienced, Thompson suffered from posttraumatic stress disorder, alcoholism, divorce, and severe nightmare disorder. He remained in the United States Army until November 1st, 1983. In 1998, 30 years after the massacre, Thompson and the two other members of his crew, Glenn Andreotta and Lawrence Colburn, were awarded the Soldier’s Medal (Andreotta posthumously), the United States Army’s highest award for bravery not involving direct contact with the enemy. Thompson and Colburn also returned to Sơn Mỹ in 1998, to meet with survivors of the massacre. In 1999, Thompson and Colburn received the Peace Abbey Courage of Conscience Award. Thompson’s role is recounted in Trent Angers’ The Forgotten Hero of My Lai: The Hugh Thompson Story.

Another massacre took place in the nearby hamlet of My Khe (4) where 97 people were reported killed by Bravo Company. Eventually the story of My Lai was brought to light), but like most other massacres My Khe received little notice outside Vietnam. (See entries for March 28, 1968, September 5, 1969, March 31 and November 12, 1970, and March 29, 1971.)

Anti-war Senator Robert Kennedy enters the presidential race. Polls indicate Kennedy is now more popular than the President. During his campaign, Kennedy addresses the issue of his participation in forming President John F. Kennedy’s Vietnam policy by stating, “past error is no excuse for its own perpetuation.”

March 17 A major rally outside the U.S. Embassy in London’s Grosvenor Square results in 86 people injured and over 200 arrested. Over 10,000 had rallied peacefully in Trafalgar Square but met a police barricade outside the embassy.

March 22 Announcement is made that General Westmoreland is being relieved of his command.

March 25-26 As pessimism over U.S. prospects in Vietnam deepens, President Lyndon B. Johnson meets with 14 informal advisers, known, collectively, as “The Wise Men.” They met with LBJ after being briefed by officials at the State Department, the Pentagon and the CIA. They had been informed of a request from Gen. William Westmoreland for additional troops in the wake of perceived U.S. setbacks in the Tet Offensive. They are given a blunt assessment of the situation in Vietnam, including the widespread corruption of the Saigon government and the unlikely prospect for military victory “under the present circumstances.” Present at the White House meeting are Dean Acheson, George Ball, McGeorge Bundy, Clark Clifford, Arthur Dean, Douglas Dillon, Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas, Averell Harriman, Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., Robert Murphy, Cyrus Vance and Gens. Omar Bradley, Matthew Ridgway and Maxwell Taylor. In the words of Acheson, who summed up the recommendations from 11 of the men, “we can no longer do the job we set out to do in the time we have left, and we must begin to take steps to disengage.” Murphy, Taylor and Fortas dissent. That was a change from Johnson’s first series of such meetings, on Nov. 1-2, 1967. Then, the Wise Men had unanimously opposed leaving Vietnam. “Public discontent with the war is now wide and deep,” Bundy had said, but he told Johnson to “stay the course.”

March 28 The initial report by participants at My Lai (Mỹ Lai) states that 69 NLF soldiers were killed and makes no mention of civilian causalities. The My Lai massacre is successfully concealed for a year, until a series of letters from Vietnam veteran Ronald Ridenhour spark an official Army investigation that results in Charlie Company Commander, Capt. Ernest L. Medina, First Platoon Leader, Lt. William Calley, and 14 others being brought to trial by the Army. News photos of the carnage, showing a mass of dead children, women and old men, remain one of the most enduring images of America’s involvement in Vietnam. See entries for Mar 16, 1968, September 5, 1969, March 31 and November 12, 1970, and March 29, 1971.)

March 30 Leavenworth – Capt. Levy is placed in “disciplinary segregation” for violating mailing privileges. See entries for December 28, 1966, May 10-June 2, and June 2, 1967.

March 31 President Johnson surprisingly decides not to seek re-election. He also announces a partial bombing halt and urges Hanoi to begin peace talks. “We are prepared to move immediately toward peace through negotiations.” As a result, peace talks soon begin. The bombing halt only affects targets north of the 20th parallel, including Hanoi.